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Why Wenger MUST start Giroud for Arsenal v Middlesborough

The last time that the Arsenal and France centre forward Olivier Giroud started a game for the Gunners was in the FA cup win over the national league side Lincoln City and the big man duly scored to help Arsenal into the next round. The last time he started a Premier League game for us, however, was back at the end of January when Watford inflicted a painful defeat at the Emirates.

It is fair to say that Giroud did not have a great game that day, but then you could say the same for every Arsenal player out there so I do not see why the Frenchman is finding it so hard to get into our below par and struggling team.

Apart from Alexis Sanchez I do not think that any of the attacking options that have been preferred to Giroud by Arsene Wenger have been good enough to keep him out and the EPL stats on squawka.com, which in my opinion is the very best esport website, bear this out very clearly.

Walcott has 10 league goals this season which is one more than Giroud but he has had over twice the amount of game time in which to score them. If you look at the stats for goals scored and assists on a minute by minute average, Olivier is way ahead of the rest and his shooting accuracy is the best as well.

Apart from that his game is suited to what we expect to encounter in Middlesborough this evening, a compact and deep lying defence with little time and space to work the ball through the middle. So as well as his stature giving us more of a threat with balls into the box we also have his strength and hold up play. If, that is, the manager decides to give him our centre forward a rare start.

as long as we cross for the guy… instead of side ways back ward passing… we go to the sides and suddenly pass backward and go to the side there is no shots no crosses in our team and I have no idea the point of these to be honest

Because of him Wenger never replaced RVP or bought another quality striker. He went missing last season when, in theory, we were closer to the PL title than in any other period over the last 10+ years. He simply is not up to the standard of the other top strikers in the PL and he was therefor, indirectly, the reason Wenger tried to convert Sanchez to central striker. Sanchez is way better than Giroud as striker but we did lose a great wide player who could also score. Theo picked up some of the slack from Sanchez moving to the center but he is not the same threat.

Then to top it all of, for reasons only clear to Wenger but possibly due to his large ego and the desire to punish Sanchez, he moves Sanchez back to the left wing amd in the process removing our best striker and putting Sanchez in his least productive position.

To no fault of his own, Giroud might be a decent striker for a mid-table team or for a foreign league, but as Henry suggested, he is not the type of striker you expect to see lead the line for a PL winning side. He has too many gaps in his game, lack of speed, inability to go around defenders and time needed to get shot of not being the last of his weaknesses IMO.

For me, his best role if he needs one, is as substitue where as times he has been very effective.